so, imagine seeing a woman staggering on the street late at night, falling with a shriek and blood pooling. was she attacked? who did this to her? you run to her aid, help her up, bring her back to your house. let her lay on your bed, rest and get comfortable while you, in mounting panic, try to think of who you could call, who could help. the smell of blood is thick in your house already, and then her cries sharpen.
you run back, and she’s murmuring words. unable to make them out, you lean in closer and closer. then she reaches out, as if for something to hold on to, and grasps your hand, pulling you, reeling you in. tumbling to the bed with a yelp, there’s a blur of limbs and force, more strength than a dying woman should have.
twisting, she pins you down, that pained mask giving way to a triumphant snarl. her wounds split open, more blood and gore pouring down upon you, but it’s not just muscles and organs bulging out from her naked, degloved body. dark blue tentacles, surge like monsters from abyssal depths.
more tendrils than you can count enwrap you like iron cables. you’re constricted into nothing but a whining immobile prey item. a knot of tendrils hatch now from the woman’s chest, and dark eyes glimmer in surveyance around puckered lamprey mouths, rows of teeth like sunflower petals, yawning hungrily wide.
sickle-barbed tendrils cut you open, and the slithering lengths move again, probing into you, exploring muscle cords and fat folds.
calm yourself, little tool. we’ll put you to use soon. our last host failed us too soon. but you’ll be much better, won’t you? don’t worry, we’ll make sure.
indigo worms slither further beneath your flesh. you can see the blue coloring your flesh, thicker and darker than varicose veins, tracing its burrowing attention.
feeling faint, darkness edges your vision and your breaths are rapid, shallow, pointless. but there’s too much adrenaline for you not to hold on to consciousness with agonized grip.
that voice is in your head again, hot like a poker: foreign thoughts burn where they’re inserted. that voice is listing out you, your entire existence no more than itemized list of capabilities and statistics.
height, weight, age, blood type (alas, pressure’s hard to take with this many open wounds), muscle mass, fat composition, vitamin deficiencies. tentacles curl in calculation, fine sensors brushing again nerves. you twitch in places you’ve never consciously moved.
the poker strikes you again and again, and maybe your metaphoric mind-flesh has quick-calloused, because it’s stopped burning you, that intrusion, that touch. maybe this voice would have been a soothing croon, if it weren’t loud enough to drown all thoughts as you’re torn open and invaded.
you’re being filled, length and writhing thickness squirming into a body, your body, never meant to contain this much. like a ball of snakes forced into an already loaded chest, but they can slither around and lodge themselves in cracks. your flesh is pliable, so giving, and skin stretches and distends for yard after blood-soaked yard. (you have ten, twenty feet of entrails; what’s a little more?) the number of tentacles outside out dwindle.
like that, you’re worn, filled, inhabited. the mass goes to your belly, most of all, swelling up like an expectant mother’s roundness.
the corpse above, once pinning you down, now slumps, puppetstrings cut, and meeting those glazed, empty eyes is like staring into a mirror. were you no more than its host now, nursing death for the next well-intentioned fool who dares help you when it’s done with you?
oh, don’t cry on me now. won’t it be better, to die with purpose? your kind loves sacrificing oneself for others. you wanted to help that woman, at nothing but cost to you. and you are helping. you’re doing such a good job already.
earlier, you were thinking of who to call for help. maybe your thoughts flicker back to that now, wondering if anyone can tear this thing out, or put you down.
absolutely not!
those are not words — this is much clearer than that. this is agony, this is terror, this is every sense in your mind and body set on fire.
this is training. be good, learn fast, and do not make us do that again.
rest now and heal, my fool little thing. you’ll dream of—
a long journey through perilous lands, till at last you slide home like a sword into a sheath. a blanket engulfing you, a glove that fits so perfectly. you flex, and the fingers move just as you will. you’re safe, you’re so happy that you have a healthy host again and it’s so happy to serve you.
your life becomes clay in its hands. or rather, you become clay in your own hands, being told how to move. you awake and you can’t lay in bed, or it punishes you. you work, but can’t forget to eat, to feed it, or it punishes you. you go outside, explore, meet new people, as it studies and plots how to turn you to its advantage.
your body changes, and not just from the paras— from the mutualist that undulate within you. hormones are mixed and injected, and your body adjusts to its preferences. you remember the woman you buried: your breasts fill out, your hair lengthens, and your skin softens around your wounds. you get larger and thicker, giving it more space.
your life has become its clay, and isn’t that wonderful? you are its tool, and it takes good care of its tools — this simply results in better work.
your guest is always there to talk to you, always feels what you’re feeling — understanding this profound satisfies you on levels you never imagined possible. you lie down to sleep, and you are at once gripped in an inside-out hug, as waves of pressure and release wring all the tension from all your body.
so of course you let out a high, pleased squeak for it. it knows just how please you, a partner with no equal. and yet you need to hide it. not being able to tell any other vessel just why you’re so happy lately is almost as bad as punishment. and yet you must, because otherwise the empty ones would be scared, disgusted, and confused.
simply confused, really — though they’d insist they aren’t. isn’t this peace, knowing your guest knows better and you need only be good for it? and isn’t it just lovely to look at? the bulging cords give your flesh a twisting definition where those empty vessels are so flat and boring to look at. and that deep shade of blue, faint beneath the translucency of skin? your flesh has become a painting, exquisite in form and rendering.
so of course you let it admire its handles handiwork. when it moves your limbs, it’s as if your limbs are gripped and tugged along by a guiding hand entirely from the inside. and if it constricts tight enough, you’ll go numb and the limb is truly all its own.
it explores your body, its body, squeezing, rubbing, and questing further with your hand. you let it know when it reaches that spot. there. it pushes and pushes, and your cries are louder. right there, right there, oh yes just right there!
you’re clay for it to shape, and now you’re getting hotter. you feel its mind intruding deeper than it ever has. it’s been a while since you’ve felt its thoughts burning hot. you are clay for the oven, just need to be glazed—
and then it stops. the cables tightens and your pumping arms are forced to halt. you lay there, wet and needing, melting in that almost-overflowing basin. there’s desperation enough to move your other arm, to push on and let it flow, even if it won’t feel as good. but—
it has been so long since your mind and body was torn asunder by well-deserved punishment.
absolutely not, it chides you. you are mine to reward. you could no more do that yourself than you could order yourself, or wield yourself.
and you understand. well, maybe not entirely, perhaps there’s still errant fear and anger lingering from the punishment (that’s not you, ignore it). it’s done so much to understand you. can’t you meet it halfway?
at length, the mounting need subsides in a rather less satisfying way. that would be disappointing enough, but then your possessed hand moves again, gently touching and enticing. your excitement mounts — oh, were you good enough to be rewarded anyway?
no. you’re left to soak again and again, tempted, taunted, but not taken.
its maddening. it’s torture. it’s—
a promise. the thought is subtle, ghostly, and you throw yourself deeper into its mind to hear it. do you want more?
but it already knows the answer.
and what would your do for more?
anything!
good, good. my fool little thing. we’ll give you what you crave… if you give us what we need. for as much as we love you, there is a loneliness we cannot excise. this is your task: find us another vessel, and we will find another tangle to fill it. after all, it would suit to have company next time we lay like this, would it not?
so that was the price of your gratification. find someone, lure or lie or leash them, and let them be torn open and worn like armor, screaming and afraid, mind like a book read and rewritten.
but wouldn’t it feel amazing for you, for it, for them, to have an empty vessel completed? you are so wet and pliable; you need it.
you are like clay — but you could be hardened and useful, soon.
wouldn’t it be good? so won’t you be good?